Video phone

A video phone is a system for bidirectionally transmitting moving pictures and speech of minimum quality over conventional telephone lines. A video phone combines an image capture device, an image display device, and a codec for coding and decoding the image. In recent years, there has been a rapid advance in multiplex communication systems transmitting both audio data and image data, such as with video conferences and motion video telephone systems. Because two-way video communications can give individuals the ability to communicate graphical information and to see facial expressions and gestures that cannot be conveyed by audio alone, much emphasis has been placed on commercial development of such systems. Unlike conventional speech and data communications systems, the videophone allows one party to look the other party in the face and see expressions thereon, and a large amount of information can be transmitted to each party. With the recent development of new compression techniques over standard telephone lines, it has now become possible to effectively transmit and receive video images over a standard telephone line. A videophone system generally consists of a terminal equipped with a communications interface linked to a telephone or other line, a camera and a restoration unit with a screen on which the image of the speaker positioned in front of the camera and the remote speaker can be displayed.